Reviews | Maths Blog

The Shopping Basket by John Burningham

The Shopping Basket (Red Fox picture book)

The Shopping Basket by John Burningham is a great little book which will be thoroughly enjoyed by young children whilst at the same time helping them with counting and subtraction. Steven is a little boy who is asked by his mum to go round to the local corner shop, taking the shopping basket with him to bring back 6 eggs, five bananas, four apples….etc. The scenario will be familiar to many children as a trip round to the corner shop is often the first time they are allowed out alone by their parents. However, this is not an ordinary trip to the shops as Steven meets all kinds of dangers on the way. These dangers come in the form of animals such as a bear, a monkey and a kangaroo, demanding the contents of his shopping basket. Steven deals with the dangers in a variety of ways and arrives home safely – but will his heroic efforts be appreciated? John Burningham is one of the best writers of children’s books and this is one of his best – humourous, well illustrated and not to be missed.

The Enormous Crocodile by Roald Dahl

The Enormous Crocodile
review by mathsblog.co.uk

The Enormous Crocodile by R Dahl

If you want to introduce your child to some mathematical words involving shape and have enormous fun whilst doing so, then ‘The Enormous Crocodile’ by Roald Dahl is just the book for you. But you do have to have a delicious liking for cruel humour and not mind rather tasteless endings!
Typical of Dahl’s writing, with name calling, suspense and a horribly vile villain, it is probably best left for the over threes. You might find that your children become horribly addicted to the story and want it read to them time and again!
In short, the crocodile tells the other animals that he has some clever tricks up his sleeve to eat some juicy children. Indeed they are clever tricks, but one by one the hippo, monkey etc ensure that his plans are thwarted and the greedy croc comes to a suitable end!
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The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

It teaches about counting, ordering, time and days of the week as well as a little science! Each page is a new day and each day the caterpillar eats one more piece of food

The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Picture Puffin)
This is the book which has inspired many young children. An absolute must for children from one upwards, although I am pretty sure that you will have come across it before.Put simply, a story about how a little egg, on a leaf in the moonlight becomes a hungry caterpillar who eats and eats and eats until finally turning into a beautiful butterfly.

Make sure that you get the large size book as the holes in the pages which the caterpillar has eaten through are great for young children to explore.
It teaches about counting, ordering, time and days of the week as well as a little science! Each page is a new day and each day the caterpillar eats one more piece of food.
The BBC has written news stories about this book including that it has been said that one copy a minute has been sold since it was released in 1969.

Ten in the Bed by Penny Dale

Ten in the BedTen in the Bed by Penny Dale

Ten out of Bed by Penny Dale

Well, actually we have two great books to read to your children when they are snuggled up in bed ready to go to sleep. Most of us are aquainted with the nursery rhyme, There were ten in the bed and the little one said, “Roll over, roll over!”
They are about a young child (it could be a boy or a girl as s/he is only referred to as ‘The Little One’) who has ten cuddly animals in bed with him/her. They play games but one at a time the cuddly animals become sleepy and fall out of the bed (great for learning how to count down from 10) until the child is left all alone.
Now these toys are not all goody goodies and there is a lot of action going on in the background, allowing for new stories to be made up every evening. The endings of both books are, of course, happy ones with them all back in bed, fast asleep.

Five Little Ducks by Ian Beck

Five Little Ducks

Five Little Ducks is a story about… yes, you guessed it, five little ducks! They go out one day, waddling down to the pond to play.
But, as they swim and play on the pond, one of them wanders off and disappears, and then another, and another until there is just one little duck left. You are not really sure what has happened to each of the ducks, especially as there is a fox lurking in the background. However, there is a happy ending as Mama Duck finds her missing ducklings snuggled up in the garden shed.
Great story for counting up and down to five, with wonderful illustrations.
Ian Beck was an illustrator for over 20 years (including the artwork for Elton John’s Yellow Brick Road album) and turned to writing children’s stories for his own first child.

There are several other books with the same title, but this is definitely my favourite.

Handa’s Surprise by Eileen Browne

Handa’s Surprise (Walker paperbacks)

Handa’s Surprise is a great book for young children – one that they really like to have read to them again and again. As well as being a good story it incorporates some strong maths concepts, including counting, sequencing and subtraction.
Set in Africa there is a warm summery glow to the book with bright illustrations and a range of unusual animals and fruits which children may not have come across before.
Handa puts seven exotic fruits into her basket and sets off to take them to her friend. She carries the basket on her head and as she walks along animals steal the fruits one at a time.

This is available as a ‘Big Book’ and with a DVD.

Handa’s Surprise (Walker paperbacks)

The Little Maths Book: an intro to algebra

Beginning algebra can be tricky – and that’s where The Little Maths Book comes in. The idea is to move away from the usual dull, functional explanations and come up with something small and beautiful which is a great introduction to algebra.
Two brothers (a maths tutor and award winning graphic designer) have got together to produce a clever little book concentrating on the fundamental ideas of algebra, but with engaging graphics of birds, balloons, buses etc. It has clever fold out pages which show visually what happens when you balance an equation, almost like a pop-up book.
Aimed at any age, this is a nifty book which makes understanding algebra interesting and fun for both young and old alike. Certainly an excellent introduction for year 7 students.

The Little Algebra Book

Mangahigh Review: Online maths for High School

A relatively new site which has come to my attention recently is mangahigh.com. Aimed at High School students, this would only be appropriate to older primary children with a good mathematical knowledge.

A great free game to try out would be Ice Ice Maybe on estimation which is well within the range of older primary children – but watch out, it might prove addictive!

The aim of the site is to intrigue and interest students with high quality games whilst at the same time introducing new maths concepts. The repetition within playing the game leads to knowledge and success in exams.

As they say:
“Mangahigh’s unique game-based learning system brings out the mathematician in ALL students who love games.”

The games are certainly of a high standard, equal to many of the best on-line games and will almost certainly be attractive to High School students.

The games award students for success but more than this, it has a ‘learning engine’ that includes thousands of maths problems with worked answers.

Mangahigh covers all of the lessons required to score highly at Foundation and Higher Maths GCSE exams, and the questions and content are matched to teaching goals for all the major UK exam boards.

The people behind mangahigh certainly give it credibility: Ian Livingstone of Livingstone and Jackson Dungeons and Dragons and White Dwarf magazine as well as Marcus Du Sautoy, Professor of Maths at Oxford and Toby Rowland of King.com.

Starting at £4.85 a month if subscribing for a year there are many worse ways of spending your money on your children.

Top maths sites: Numicon Maths resources

Numicon uses a very different approach from most maths programmes in that they use shapes to represent numbers. In this way children, through physically handling a shape, gain a mental image of a number and then cease to rely on the ‘concrete’ shape. The shapes are colourful, pleasing to handle and very robust – ideal for the Reception classroom. They also have a Home Kit to help with numbers from one to ten which includes a number book and CD of songs.

Originally designed for children in Early Years it is now used extensively by many teachers in Key Stage 2 as it can be used for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division as well as other arithmetic operations.

To get the best use of the resources there are a number of videos available on the site which are well worth looking at, as this approach breaks the restrictive trends of the Numeracy Strategy; always a good thing!

They also have a number of free resources for primary children (aged 5 – 11) to put on the wall at home at:

http://www.numicon.com/display_resources.html

If you are looking for a different approach to maths or have a child who is really struggling with understanding number then I would certainly recommend this site.

Numicon

Billy’s Beetle by Mike Inkpen

Billy’s Beetle is another of Mike Inkpen’s great books for young children. Little Billy’s beetle escapes from its matchbox leading to a hunt to find the missing beetle. Billy seeks help from a variety of people and animals to try and find it. First of all he gets help from a girl and then a dog. The dog finds a hedgehog, spiders and worms but not his beetle. As the hunt goes on other creatures get involved, including a polar bear and an elephant. Look out for a hidden beetle on each page! Great illustrations and brilliant for reading aloud; you might find that you will have to read it time after time! It also helps with beginning to understand the language of addition and subtraction.